Online Archives

By Melissa Lauber
UMConnection Staff

One million dollars can be a hard blessing. It provides challenges and opportunities to do unparalleled ministry. Baltimore-Washington Conference leaders are discovering those opportunities as they explore how to use a one-time surplus of $1 million from 2006 to further the conference?s vision and to bless others.

'God blessed us with a million dollars,' said Martha Knight the conference director of finance and administration. 'We must now discover how God wants us to be a blessing.'

The surplus was created through the sacrifice of our churches, the leadership of pastors and the discipline of conference staff, said Bishop John Schol.

'This is a one-time surplus,' said the Rev. Charles Harrell, chair of the conference Council on Finance and Administration. 'We now have a unique opportunity to leverage this blessing to get us further, faster, toward our goals of calling, sending and supporting disciple-making leaders.'

Although auditors have yet to make an official report, initial calculations indicate the conference received a little more than $1 million over its $24,942,822 in expenses in 2006.

Harrell and Knight attribute this surplus to a number of factors. Chief among them is that the conference recently went through a time of transition, Harrell said. It ceased financing old ways of doing things but hadn?t yet deployed new programs. Position vacancies and staff realignment also contributed to the surplus, as did new measures to redirect and cut unnecessary expenses.

But more exciting, said Knight, is that churches were increasingly faithful in their giving of apportionments to support connectional ministries. In 2006, 18 more churches joined the ranks of those bearing Acts 2 fruit by paying 100 percent of their apportionments.

Several others also significantly increased the percentage of apportionments they paid, Harrell said. 'This is something to celebrate.'

To stress that this money is a blessing, the Council on Finance and Administration approved a recommendation from the Connectional Table, which met Feb. 24, to tithe 10 percent of the $1 million to mission and ministry.

The remainder of the $1 million, CFA members decided, would be spent on strategic measures to create 'fire and focus,' to multiply the potential for disciple-making within the conference.

These one-time investments, members said, will be designed to take the conference to the next level by providing ripples of realized potential and opportunities for growth that would not be possible by doing business as usual.

CFA voted to allot:
? $400,000 to strategic resources, including $200,000 in assistance to build a dining hall at West River Camp in Churchton (plans for which have been deferred for almost a decade), $100,000 on information technology and Web site development, and $100,000 to identify future options for conference center office space;
? $300,000 on new, strategic, one-time ministry programs that will resource local churches and take the conference to the next level of the Discipleship Adventure.
? $150,000 to help replenish the conference?s depleted emergency reserve funds; and
? $50,000 for training and development of spiritual leaders.

CFA members considered, but rejected, the idea of giving funds back to local churches. They based their decision on a number of factors, including input from local church leaders who reinforced the notion that they gave apportionment money to the connectional church because that is part of their identity as United Methodists.

CFA did not want to violate this trust, said Harrell, who added that a one-year dip in apportionments could cause an extra shock to the financial systems of some local churches when apportionments went up to normal levels the following year. Diluting the potential impact of the money by dividing it into 698 smaller pieces could also distract the conference from moving forward quickly on its priorities, he said.

'The Baltimore-Washington Conference,' said Harrell, 'must keep its eye on the ball and its commitment to growing Acts 2 churches by being a powerful witness for Christ.'

'Money tells a story,' said Knight. 'This is a story of transformation.'

SIDEBAR:

Faithful giving reduces apportionments

Each church?s apportionment is determined by how much money it spends on itself, such as building expenses and staff compensation--rather than directly on mission and ministry. All 698 churches of the Baltimore-Washington Conference are apportioned a fair share of the payments needed to support connectional mission and ministries that no one congregation could do on its own.

The percentage of its budget that each church is asked to pay is called the benevolence factor, which is set each year by voting members of annual conference from every congregation.

In an effort to resource local churches, the conference has pledged to reduce this benevolence factor by half a percentage point each year, to 20 percent by 2012.

However, because an increasing number of churches have been faithful in paying 100 percent of their apportionments, the benevolence factor will be reduced three-quarters of a percentage point in the coming year, from 23.25 percent this year to 22.5 percent in 2008.